


Rota

by eag



Series: Fortunae Plango Vulnera [7]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Bartertown, Drivers and Lancers, Family, Gen, History of the Citadel, Loss, Love, Origin Story, Other, Scars, The Citadel, War Boy Society, War Boys, War Boys Showing Affection, Young Ace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:38:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4352738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eag/pseuds/eag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day 12075 plus the thousands of other days he's lost and can't remember.  The life and times of The Ace.</p><p>Sketches of Ace's life, and the rise of Immortan Joe and the Citadel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rota, as in a wheel, or in the sense of a work schedule, or to render unconscious. 
> 
> Both precedes and follows _Furiosa_ and _Fortuna_ but can be read on its own.

Above them the windmill turned and turned, pumping water with a steady, creaking sound, powered by the constant flow of wind.

A rough, child's sketch in the fine powdery dirt, the bore hole, the depth marked out, the running of the pipes. Diameter, depth, drill. The wind shifted and the sketch blurred but it was still legible enough to go by.

“Depth of the well?”

“100 meters, Poppa.”

“What's the ratio?”

“1:1 direct drive.”

“How about the rpm?”

“50 to 60!”

“And how do we count that?”

“By sitting still and counting my heartbeat against the mark on the blade and a fixed point.”

“Good work, Ace. Nice job.” And he smiled as his father's hand tousled his sandy hair. The man took off his round black helmet and set it on his son's head. “Someday soon, you'll be an Engineer just like the rest of the family. Doing good for the world.”

Ace laughed as the helmet came down over his head, smelling of machine oil and sweat. The edge dipped over his eyes and the deep shadow of the helmet blocked out the bright sun of the waste.

“Poppa! Ace! Mum says she's done with the new borehole and wants you to have a look. She thinks the water's going sour.”

“Right, there you go. Off with you. Tell your mother I'll be by shortly.”

 

Ace clambered around the old wreck, catching sunning lizards with a slipknot of string tied to an old car antenna. He let them go after inspecting them, after looking at their ticks and parasites and the jagged scars where their tails had grown back. Once he caught a two-headed one, and though he wanted to keep it in a jar and feed it insects, he realized he couldn't separate it from its family so he let it go. 

Through the cracked and spidery glass he could see inside; it was dusty and dry, full of the slow decay of fabric and plastic and metal. He crawled up onto the roof and laid back on the rusted heap, tipping his cap over his face. The warmth of the metal against his back, the heat of the sun...

Suddenly a strong pair of hands grabbed him and pulled him off the wreck and instinctively, he rolled, curling up, but instead of falling to the ground, arms held him tight, giving him a squeeze.

“Ha, got you, Ace.” 

“Frances!” He squirmed, twisting in her grip.

She kissed his forehead, and he made a face. “No fair!” 

“You're right, it's not fair.” She set him down. She was over ten years older than him and tall, her tanned arms muscled tightly, and when she bent down to meet his eyes, he stole her cap off her head. Her short brown hair was jagged and damp from sweat. “Wanna fight about it? Show me what you've learned.”

Ace glanced around; there were a few bricks behind her, in a tumbled heap.

“I'll get you!” He grabbed her around the waist and pushed, and she tripped over the bricks, falling onto her backside with a musical jingle of her tool belts.

“Ow!” But Frances was laughing, pulling him into her arms and kissing his cheeks. “I deserved that. Gotta watch your back and your feet, always.” She winked at him and he scrambled back onto his feet and helped her up.

“Time to get back to work, Ace. Poppa says the tank's leaking, so I'm going to go put on a new weld. We gotta pump and store as much as we can before we go.” 

“Okay.”

“You wanna come watch?”

“Yeah!”

*****

Ace could always remember the day they left; it was seared into his memory. Above, the clouds had hung heavy, gray, with an ominous oppression.

They were going to a better place, a green place they had heard of, far away. Traders that passed through their settlement had spread the word; they had seen it, high above the waste, inaccessible. But his family was an Engineer family, and there were many other skilled Engineer families in the settlement and they knew they could manage it. They had pooled their young people and picked scouts that were gone for weeks. The scouts had returned with good news: the place was real and habitable; the scouts had climbed up to the high valley; there was no path, just fields of boulders and steep cliffs. The way was difficult, but that was good for the community; it meant that they'd be safe from harm. The valley was habitable and the water good.

“If it's green, it means water and plenty of it.” Poppa patted his breast pocket where he kept his drawings in an oilskin pouch. “Your mother and I designed the preliminary sketches for a water system based on the scouts' drawings and measurements. We'll build it when we get there.”

“When we get there.” 

They packed up everything they could, all the tools and books and plans, and carefully secured them onto the rig. The windmills were dismantled and packed as well, stacked in big piles of long aluminum, coded and numbered. Furniture they could always build from scrap, but it was sad leaving the great beautiful table of smooth carved wood that his parents did their work on. It was a survivor from the old days.

“Never mind that, we can draw anywhere where there's a flat surface,” Mum had said. “Leave it be; it's been in this house since Before. It would be a terrible waste if it fell off the truck and broke. It's held out here for so long that we better let someone else enjoy it.”

So on the morning they left, they got into the rig, piled high with their life and their livelihood. Flanked by their fellow cars, it took several minutes of waiting before it felt like they were really going, leaving their old life behind.

The last thing Ace saw from the back window as they were leaving was the rusted out hulk of the old car, wind swirling around its empty axles.

 

Ace had a little music box that had been passed down through his father's family for generations, time out of mind. When he turned the handle, it played a song.

Sometimes when the convoy stopped to cool and water the engines and make repairs, he would sit in the shade of the rig and play its tune, humming along. What the song was called, no one knew, but it was sweet, with a pleasing melody.

“Hey, what's that?” Ace looked up to see a young man. Maybe almost as big as Frances. Someone from a neighboring settlement that had joined their convoy, a youth Ace didn't recognize as one of their neighbors.

“It's a music box,” Ace replied politely. “The mechanism works by simple forward rotation--”

The youth snatched it from his hand before he could continue.

“Hey, that's mine!” Immediately, Ace was up on his feet, his heart pounding, but the youth was taller and bigger, and he held Ace's music box out of reach.

“Only if you can get it. Otherwise it's mine now.”

Ace looked around quickly, but there was nothing obvious he could use in this fight.

“Only if I can get it?” Frances loomed over the interloper, and plucked the music box from his hand. “Is being bigger and stronger the only way to be right?” She shoved the boy against the truck, pale eyes fierce, her hand knotted in the front of his shirt. “Is that why you're picking on him?”

“Nuh-nuh--”

“Get out of here before I give you a thrashing,” Frances snarled and letting go, the youth stumbled away in fear. He shouted something as he ran; Ace had no idea what it meant, but it sounded rude.

“You okay, Ace?” Frances handed him back the music box and put her hands on his shoulders.

“Yeah, I'm fine.” Tears prickled in his eyes, and he scrubbed at his face with the back of his hands.

“It's okay. Out here, everyone turns into a beast,” she said. “It's the emptiness. It makes people crazy. Makes folks hungry and thirsty for stuff they can't even eat, like cars and people and guzzoline.”

“Really?”

“Really.” And she mimed a roar at him to make him laugh. “Gonna eat you right up!”

Ace put his arms around her as she helped him back up into the rig, lifting him bodily.

 

It was a long and dangerous run. Twice they were attacked by road warriors, and many of their neighbors had been killed defending the convoy. Curious, Ace wanted to see them bury the bodies, but his sister kept him in the rig. From a distance, he could see the ceremony; they were sprinkling handfuls of white clay over each body before consigning them to a common dusty grave. 

“Don't look.” Frances drew him away from the window and drew him close, her arm warm around his shoulder, and thoughtfully, she kissed the top of his head. “You'll see enough death one day. We all do.”

 

One moon-bright night, his mother came back, bruised and bleeding; she had been driving escort when bandits and road warriors came out of the waste to attack the convoy. Now that there were less people, everyone who could took a turn at escorting the convoy. 

Ace pretended he was asleep under the blanket, eavesdropping as his father wiped the blood off her face.

“Don't worry. It's not my blood. I gave back as good as they gave us. Better, really.”

“It's too dangerous, love. Maybe we shouldn't have left. I'm worried for Frances and Alex.”

“I am too. But you know we can't go back. We stayed too long as it is; all our supplies are low. And now that so many have died, we can't let their sacrifice mean nothing. They died protecting us. They died so we could have a better chance. We're all in now.”

“You're right, love, you're right.”

 

When the storm began swirling its sandy tendrils around the convoy, everyone stopped and people got out, quickly tying ropes and chains from vehicle to vehicle, so that no one would lose their way down the line. Goggled and masked, men and women scrambled from rig to rig, making quick repairs, making sure everyone was together. 

“Where are Mum and Poppa?” Ace looked out the window of the rig, trying to make them out in the mirrors.

“Fixing the tank. It's leaking again.” Frances had tears in her blue-gray eyes, and Ace put his arm around her shoulder.

“It's not your fault. It's an old tank that's always leaked.”

“I could have welded it better. I know I could have done better.”

“Poppa says welds can't hold forever. Sometimes things are just broken and can't be fixed.”

Frances wiped at her eyes and he hugged her tight, feeling her tears damp against his forehead.

 

A little while later, daylight turned suddenly to night, and an even stronger wind struck the rig. Frances swallowed and they both stared in fear at a trickle of sand that was coming in through a cracked window.

“Do you think they're okay?”

“'Course they're fine. They'll be back any minute.” She ran her thumb between the teeth of the curved-jaw pliers in her tool belt, the metal edges digging into the calloused pad of her thumb

“I'm scared.”

“It's okay to be scared sometimes.” Frances tucked the blanket around his shoulders. “I've been scared before, plenty of times.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like when the men came with the guns and started shooting. A couple nights ago.”

“What're you supposed to do when you're scared? I'm scared all the time now. I wish we were home.”

“I don't know, Alex. But wishing doesn't solve anything, and being scared...” She shrugged. “It's a natural thing, I suppose. Sometimes I think the best thing is to try to not be scared. Put up a brave face until you feel like you're not scared anymore.”

“Even if you're scared?”

“Even if you're scared.” She looked out the window at the storm. “Alex, I think it's important to keep going, to keep trying. Even if you screw up. Especially if everyone's counting on you.”

She sat back and fidgeted for a while, before squaring her shoulders, nodding to herself. Frances leaned down to kiss his cheek.

“Stay here and get some sleep. I'm going to go down to check the tank. Whatever you do, don't leave the rig until the storm stops. Don't open the door or the windows. Promise?” She offered him her hand, and he clasped it, feeling her strength, her warmth.

“Okay. I promise.” Ace laid down, stretched out on the back seat of the rig. He was exhausted from the fear, from the nervous tension in his body. Soon they would be back, and they'd dig out, riding to Walhalla. He closed his eyes.

 

The storm lasted three days.

 

Ace was one of the first ones out when the storm ended. The sky was brilliantly blue, with a cold, icy clarity that he would always remember. There was an intense silence in the waste, a calm that seemed almost unnatural. Heaps of sand had drifted around the rig; it was buried so deeply that he had to shove hard with his feet to get the door open.

He slid down the dune that had piled up around the rig and began looking for Frances, for his mother and father.

“Frances? Mum! Poppa!” 

Soon a chorus of other children joined him, thin, shrill voices in the waste calling out for those who could no longer hear them.

 

He found Frances buried to her chest in sand. She looked like she had fallen asleep with her goggles on, but despite the mask of cloth around her face, her mouth and her nose were plugged up with sand. She was propped up just behind the tanker, and her tough hand had sealed the leak so that the water was safe. She had died protecting them. If they had lost the water they would have all died.

He found his parents a few meters away, half-buried in sand, facing west. The line they were hanging onto had broken free in the storm, and they went the wrong way before trying to shelter together. Their mouths and noses too were clotted with sand, despite cloths they had wound around their faces. His father's black helmet lay cupped between them, filled with sand. The sand got into everything.

 

He didn't know what to do. He knew he should probably be crying but there was only a deep, intense emptiness inside of him, a stillness as profound as the stillness of the waste. The best he could do was put an empty bucket under the leak to catch the precious water, and drag Frances' dead weight down beside the rig, the heaviest weight he had ever tried to carry. He sat in the cold shade of the rig with her, stroking his fingers through her soft sandy hair.

*****

He woke in the crook of her cold arm. She was stiff and white, and he knew he had to bury her, bury them. Dig a deep hole. Sprinkle them with white clay. 

A strong hand gave him a shake, and he flinched away, but the tall man knelt down so that their eyes met. He had a thick head of curling brown hair, a wild shock shot through with streaks of gold and knotted in an almost comical topknot. Golden stubble crusted his broad jaw.

“You're an Engineer's kid, aren't you?”

“Yeah.” 

“What's your name, son?”

“Alex, but everyone calls me Ace.”

“All right, Ace. I need you to start digging out your rig. We can't do anything about the dead. They can't help us now and we can't help them. We can't stay here like this. Out here, we're buzzard bait. Can you drive?” The way he said it sounded like the man had said it many times already. It was beginning to sound more like a set piece than words of comfort.

“Of course.”

“Then you have the honor of driving the family car. Danny's already patched the leak. I'm Joe. We're gonna get to Walhalla, no matter what. All right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And...” The man looked down at Frances' body, and he shook his head just a little. “I hate to tell you to do this, Ace, but you're gonna have to strip the bodies for anything useful. Like the tools.” He pointed to Frances' treasured tool belts. “We'll need everything we can to survive and rebuild. All right, get to work. We're going to try to get back on the road before noon.”

“Yeah.” Numbly, Ace found a shovel and started digging.

 

He saved his family for last. Sore and shaking with fatigue, he somehow managed to drag Frances closer to his parents. His father's black helmet was gone; so were his shiny brown shoes and his coat, but Ace felt into his father's shirt pocket and found the design drawings in their oilskin pouch. He put them away carefully, reverently.

“I'm sorry, Frances.” Working carefully, he unfastened her tool belts and tugged them out from under her. Everything was there, all her carefully collected tools, from years of gifting and trading. Some she had even made herself, to fit her hand. He slung them over his shoulders; the belts were too big for him to wear around his waist and even draped over his shoulders, they weighed him down.

He slipped off her dark welding goggles and put them around his own neck. Her eyes were closed as if she were merely asleep.

Kneeling at her side, he kissed her cheek one last time. And he kissed his mother and father's hands before setting their cold, lifeless wrists over each other. Their hands had been balled up protectively into fists; there was no way he could unbend those stiff fingers so they could hold each other into eternity.

He couldn't bury them. He didn't have the strength.

Ace didn't have to go far to find the white clay; there were many pockets of it, all over the waste. Briefly shrugging off the belts, he took off his red flannel shirt and using it as a bag, piled it up with the soft, crumbly white clay that he dug out with his bare hands. He took big handfuls of the dry clay and sprinkled it over the bodies. The wind caught the white powder and it flew over the sand in a brittle white scatter.

He pressed his whitened hands to his face, tears streaming down his cheeks. The white powder congealed on the skin of his face, mixing with his tears and he couldn't help but smear it when he wiped at his eyes, at his running nose. 

He stood for a long moment, trying to think of what he would say to them if they were still here, if they could still hear, choking on his sobs until shivering, he pulled his white-stained shirt back up over his bare skin.

He hugged himself. Out here it was just him, alone, and the vast expanse of the waste, the bruised mountains looming like black clouds in the distance, the orange-red glow of the dirt and the golden sand that smothered everything.

White, everything was white. He closed his eyes against the awful blue of the sky that he no longer wanted to see.


	2. Chapter 2

They kept going. There were just enough kids big enough to drive so that they were able to take all the vehicles but for a few that were so sand-choked as to be beyond repair. Most of the survivors were like him, children, some no more than a handful of years old. The very littlest had died already, some because their mothers had been killed and there was no milk, others because of the choking dust that got into everything. 

Ace watched in amazement as Joe ran up and down the line all day, jumping from car to car as they drove closely, calling for stops to make repairs and water engines, checking up on the kids like himself that were driving. Ace was managing fine; he was tall for his age and Mum had been a good teacher, but there were many who had only rudimentary skills and couldn't help but bump the rigs now and then. At least they weren't going too fast, he thought, as he watched Joe clamber down the back of the rig ahead of him, re-coupling a loose fuel pod in the haze of dust.

 

One night when they stopped to rest the engines, Ace realized he had lost his music box. Trying to mentally retrace his steps, he realized that the last time he had remembered having it, it had been in his shirt pocket. It must have fallen out when he filled it with the white.

So it was like everyone else. Left behind, stained white with clay. 

Ace tried to mourn its absence, tried to be mad at himself for losing it, but he was too tired to care. He flopped back onto the seat of the rig and fell asleep where he was sitting, too tired to even consider laying down.

 

It was a long week's run before they sighted the great towers of stone rising off the waste.

 

This wasn't Walhalla but it would have to do. They looked up to see the green at the tops of the towers of stone. That meant water. Ace licked his dry lips thirstily, but just seeing the green seemed to soothe another kind of thirst, one that he didn't even know he had.

The ground was free from tire marks and footprints; no one had been here for ages, perhaps ages beyond memory. Even though there were less of them now their food was running low; much of their supplies had been snatched overnight by thieves days ago, and while they had water, it couldn't last forever, not with the leaking tank that seemed to resist all efforts of patching.

“Wherever we go,” Joe spoke to the children from the top of the rig as they gathered around, eyes hollow from hunger and exhaustion. His brother Danny stood by his side, his hands on his bandoliers, bullets glinting dully in the morning light. “We will find Walhalla.”

Joe pointed to a youth wearing a round black helmet. “Primrose is in charge. Danny, let's get me up this mountain.”

Ace recognized the surly youth. Primrose was the oldest of the survivors after Joe and his brother, and he was the boy who had stolen his music box, the boy that Frances would have thrashed if he had pushed her.

“All right Joe.” The thin and gangly Danny grabbed the ropes. “I'll let you know that by my hand, I've checked every spurious inch of this rope. If you can pull this off without dying, I'll know for certain you're immortal. Ready?” 

“Yes, let's do this. Thunder up!”

The children watched as Joe climbed the pillar of rock, setting metal spikes as anchors, hauling himself up one hand over the other, the toes of his boots dug into the cracks.

Ace wasn't watching; he found his way over to the youth named Primrose. 

“Hey, that was my Poppa's.” Ace pointed at the helmet. 

“It's mine. I've always had it.” Primrose sneered at him. 

“You can't have it just because you're big. You're a liar and a stealer and I want it back.”

“Wanna fight about it?”

Something snapped in him and without even knowing why or how he managed it, Ace had Primrose on the ground, and was punching his face, one fist after another. Left, right, left, right, like a mechanical piston, without feeling, without mercy.

“That's mine!”

Some girls about Ace's age hauled Ace off of Primrose; Jan and Sam. Primrose's nose was bleeding but he was no more than just bruised. The young man got back up onto his feet, and walking over, punched Ace in the face so hard that he blacked out.

When he came to, he was propped up against Jan who was staunching his bleeding nose with a piece of red cloth torn off his own shirt. Dazed, Ace stared blearily; the red soaked into the red, merely darkening the color. Sam, the one with the long blonde hair, was yelling at Primrose.

“You broke his nose! You're crazy! He's just a kid at the end of his wits! What were you thinking?”

And then without warning, Primrose hit her too, slapping her hard with his hand, one blow after another, and she cried. But he was strong, stronger than the rest of them and besides, Joe said he was in charge. Primrose barked orders, and the rest obeyed; no one wanted Primrose to hit them with his strong fists. No one wanted to disappoint Joe, who was working so hard to keep them alive, to keep them together.

Ace watched, his face masked in blood, as the children got to work unloading the rigs.

 

As the the sun set, there was a quiet hush that descended on the makeshift camp. Joe had finally done it; he had crawled his way up over the edge of the cliff top. Quickly, Joe hammered in the pulley and winch, setting it in stone. He disappeared into the green for a while and returning triumphant, he raised his right hand. He was holding an orb of gold and it gleamed in the dying light.

“Joe! Immortal Man Joe!” Danny called out laughing, his hat tilted back so he could see Joe's tiny figure, waving his arms and shouting, clasping a disk of gold.

“Look!” A boy jumped up and down, pointing. “He is the one who grabbed the sun!”

There was a great cheering that didn't lessen even after Joe came down off the pillar, faster coming down now on account of winching himself down with the rock-anchored pulley. 

“He is the one who grabbed the sun!” The words quickly spread, like wildfire, and they were chanting it as Joe came down, a grin on his broad, bearded face. Even Ace found himself yelling the words, triumphant, briefly forgetting his own pain.

Exultant, Joe uncinched himself from the rope and pulled the oranges out of his rucksack, one after another, handing them out to the kids. In a moment of inspiration, he even juggled three of them before tossing two to the grinning Danny, who was shaking his head.

Joe climbed up onto a rig, holding up an orange in his hand.

“We will rise once more from the ashes of this world,” Joe shouted, and everyone cheered.

“You've done it, Joe! You've done it! You'll always be the best! One of the heroes of all time! Joe! Immortal Man Joe!” Danny shouted, and the children took up the cry until the words blurred together.

“Immortal Man Joe!”

“Immortal Man Joe!”

“Immortan Joe!”

 

They put on the white to keep off the sun, and the black to keep off the glare. The mills were the first to go up; knowing how they worked, Ace helped set them up, helped drill new boreholes and soon the sound of their creaking meant that water was being pumped up from deep inside the stone. More food plants were being planted; someone had lived here in times past, in a crumbling sod house up top, but it had been abandoned for a long time; the plants had gone wild. So some of the younger, weaker children and girls were winched up to tend to the farming. He saw Jan go with them, holding a scared and crying child in her arms.

Everyone else still slept in the rigs, and the older members of the community took turns guarding them at night. Joe and Danny had spent a day setting kill switches; Ace and a few boys had been recruited to help and so learned the craft. That way no one could steal their vehicles.

Often, Ace sat up top a rig all night, a gun heavy in his hands, waiting for morning. To pass the time, he watched the slow turning of the cold white moon, waxing and waning. He pinched himself whenever he felt his eyes closing; it was an important job because he was trusted with their lives, so he had to be responsible.

 

The plans his parents had drawn were worthless; they were meant for the outdoors, for a creek. The only thing of value was to know what gauge of piping to use for what purpose. Fortunately most of those were intact; the bandits and buzzards that had attacked their convoy knew no use for all the odds and ends of what appeared to be scrap metal but were really plumbing and piping and mills. They only wanted what they could eat or drive or wear.

Joe and Danny, exploring the pillars, found damp, natural caverns carved into them from millennia of water erosion. The decision was made; they would live up there off the waste in the caves, but the caves needed to be expanded, extended and connected. To make it habitable, parts of it would also have to be drained. They were lucky that the sandstone was comparatively soft; granite would have been impossible without explosives.

So the kids were winched up into the caverns and handed tools. The order began to dig.

 

Most of the days that eventually dragged into the hundreds, thousands, Ace could not remember much of, other than the grinding, backbreaking labor that dragged on. Days and works, days and works, and each day blurred into another, days of exhaustion and hunger. At first Joe and Danny worked beside them, breaking and hauling rock just like everyone else, but there was so much to do that eventually, they only came around to check on the progress, to give direction.

A few children died, dropped dead mid-swing while breaking rock or while hauling it to dump out over the edge. They all scrabbled over extra portions at meal time. Ace had told himself he would stay out of it, but then he couldn't help it; he needed the extra if he was going to stay on his feet. He was growing fast and his body burnt up every crumb and morsel that he put into it. Those that didn't or couldn't work ended up left down below and sometimes buzzards picked them off, bandits that came out of the waste looking for scraps. Early on they had lost a few cars that way, but now they were after kids. Sam, the blonde girl that Prim had hit for yelling at him disappeared one night; all Ace heard was her screams as the motorcycles swooped in and out, scavengers attracted by the commotion above.

 

After that, it was decided that everyone should wear the brand, in case they were separated. In case someone was stolen. That way they could be traced back to the same clan, the same group, and recovered.

Ace overheard the Immortan and Danny discussing it one night as the ice wheel moon turned slowly above them. They were already living up above the waste, in the sod house, but tonight they were down standing guard over the vehicles.

“We put it on the back of their hands, Danny. Then everyone can see it.”

“What, and have someone slice off their hand to hide that they've been stolen? Nah, you want to put it somewhere virtuous, Joe, somewhere where all may see. Somewhere where it would be hard to take off. Nowhere where there's loose skin for it to be sliced away. Like over their hearts. Or the back of the neck.” Danny pointed to the base of his neck. “Right here, visible to all. Besides, if you were put it on their hands, they can't work til it's healed. Put it there, and we don't even lose more than half a day's work.”

The Immortan nodded, it was wise advice. “All right. Heat up the forge then and let's have it done.”

 

A skilled metalworker, Danny had the brand made within a day. They all lined up for it; Primrose was the first to be branded, and he hissed as the hot metal touched the skin at the base of his neck. Ace was further down the line; by the time he got up to the front, the Immortan had given up on the branding and had handed the job over to Prim.

It was obvious that Prim was in pain. But ignoring it, he kicked Ace to the ground, knocking him over onto his hands and knees in the dust.

The brand was cut in deep, hard, vindictively, searing his skin, but Ace just gritted his teeth, not making a sound. Ace got up and put ointment on the burn himself, sealing the wound, and went around helping others who were crying too hard to manage putting on the ointment.

The hot, burning pain stayed with him for days, keeping him from sleeping, but that just gave him more time to cut rock, to install piping. Expertly, Ace rounded off the edge of a stone bench; this would make a good infirmary for those injured, he thought, somewhere where someone sick could lie down and rest and be tended to gently. He chiseled the surface as smooth as he could make it as cool blue light rained down onto him from an air shaft.


	3. Chapter 3

Shaved head blackened and skin whitened, Ace felt the heady rush of the wind as it whistled by his ears. He stood on a running board, holding onto the trade rig, absently watching the churning wheels beneath his feet. This was a big step up from breaking rock, and he appreciated every minute of the trip.

The tools belted around his waist were a part of him now; he no longer noticed the burden of their weight. Ace was on the first run to Bartertown on the trade rig, built up with armour he had helped weld on himself, and he carried a sawed-off shotgun in a sling on his leg that he fashioned from a sleeve of his old shirt. It was too small now to wear; he forgot how long it had been since he grew out of it, but he kept the tattered remains on his belt as a shop rag. Most of them had outgrown their clothes; there had been a cache of clothing that was brought along with them but it was mostly just pants and boots; the shirts had been stolen ages ago on that awful long run. So they made do, wearing the white all over their torsos to keep off the sun, and when caked on properly, it was almost as good as a thin shirt on cold mornings, though they still moved and worked hard to stay warm.

Immortan Joe shouted from the driver's seat.

“Time for war, boys! Eyes on!” 

Buzzards were coming out of the waste to attack them, and unslinging his weapon, Ace fired. The heavy slug made the Buzzard's head explode in a flash of red, and the man's car veered wildly before stumbling over its own feet, crashing in a furious tangle of metal.

Lucky shot, Ace grinned to himself as he reloaded, as his fellow boys cheered him on.

Hanging easily off the side of the rig, his strong body powerfully muscled from years of cutting stone, Ace holstered his gun and pulled on the dark goggles that he always kept around his neck as more dust kicked up. If one were to ask him why he had those, Ace would merely shrug. He couldn't remember how he came to have them, where they were from. As far as he knew, he had always had them.

*****

Ace stood guard beside the Immortan along with the Prime. He watched as the Immortan traded, as he haggled. A bag of beans bought a new carburetor; they needed that for one of the trucks. Gallons of Aqua for guzzoline, for parts and tools to replace those that were broken. The Immortan traded a full jar of chia seeds for a bolt of fine white cloth; that was for his new wives, the pretty girls that had been spared the hardest work and mostly tended to the plants above. It stood to reason that the Immortan deserved the best; he had done most of the hard work it took to save their lives, to drag society up out of the ash and sand of the past.

Someone tried to steal the medals off the Immortan's jacket; the Prime lashed out with a white flash of his hardened fist and the man went down screaming, clutching at his burst eye.

Another man came up and pointed to the Prime's head; after some haggling, Immortan Joe traded the Prime's round black helmet for a young boy.

“Make sure he puts on the white and wears the brand,” the Immortan said to Ace, after checking the boy's teeth. “We need all the hands we can get if we want to make that place livable.”

Ace nodded, and chained the boy's wrist to his belt so he couldn't run away. By the end of the day, they had picked up two more boys, and they huddled trembling around him. He put his hand to their soft hair gently; it would come off once they got back. That kept everyone from getting lousy, kept them from smelling bad, and besides, hair made good strong rope, if you could get enough of it.

 

It was always oddly fulfilling, like slaking one's thirst after a long run, to see the boys light up when they realized that no one was going to beat them unless they weren't working, that there was regular food and water every day, morning and night. That they had a safe place to live high above the waste that was protected from buzzards and bandits. 

Soon the Bartertown runs became regular runs, and they had regular customers that would buy their produce. Their credit was good; eventually, instead of hand-carrying the goods they wanted to trade, the Immortan would write up slips for their customers, promissory notes that were always paid. Men would line up to pick up their goods at the trade rig after the Immortan and his Prime Imperator went through Bartertown with their retinue of guards.

One day, the Immortan brought back a woman. She was older than even Danny, but strong still, and she was covered from head to toe in tiny black marks. Ace never got close enough to her to read what those blurry insectile lines said, but after that, some of the boys started drawing on themselves with the black machine oil. Drawings of wrenches, of spark plugs, a carburetor, a wheel...they rubbed off quickly and were redrawn on. Eventually, someone came up with the good idea of cutting in scars. So Ace had another brand put on his chest, a bigger one than the one on his neck. That way he couldn't be lost or stolen; he'd be one of the boys until he died.

 

Rumor had it that one of the Immortan's wives was pregnant, then another. Here and there, news trickled down from the sod house up top. The order was given; they would start expanding an existing cavern in the other stone pillar, for the Immortan and his growing family. Ace was lucky; he was too skilled and valuable these days to be wasted on hard labor, and was exempted from most of the digging, merely overseeing the installation of drainage pipes and water systems. With more boys and young men, the work on the Immortan's new home took a fraction of the time so Ace eventually found himself working mostly on cars, learning the ins and outs from an older Engineer boy named Kimi. Now that their farms were producing so much surplus, no one went hungry. Times were good. 

Then one morning, as Ace was up top among the green, troubleshooting a clogged pump on a windmill, he heard a terrible scream.

Worried, he rushed over to the sod house, wiping his oil-stained hands as he ran, tool belts jingling.

Through the open window Ace saw Miss Giddy, with the many words graven upon her skin, and she was holding the hand of a woman in a fine white dress, murmuring words of comfort. The woman's belly was swollen bulbous and shocked, Ace realized that he had not seen a pregnant woman since he was very little and that for a moment, he had no idea what her state meant.

The woman's breaths were coming jaggedly and she screamed again, her long, dark hair flowing around her face, and suddenly Ace recognized her. It was Jan, the girl who had staunched the blood from his face years ago when his nose was broken, but wasn't she no older than him? Maybe even a bit younger? He blinked, trying to remember how old he was himself, how many days and years it had been since that terrible storm, but then Danny came out and ordered him gone, and he was sent back to work on the windmill. Ace sat and stared at the broken pump and listened to Jan's screams all morning, until they died down to a whimper.

 

They buried Jan down in the waste a few days later. She had given birth to a son, a strangely large child that the Immortan named Corpus Colossus, a giant who had killed his own mother. Fortunately for Corpus, another one of the wives was also heavily pregnant and her milk was coming in, so the child would not die.

Miss Giddy oversaw the funeral down in the waste. The Immortan and his brother were there. All the boys came down to watch; they were given a half-day off to mourn. She said many things then, most of which Ace could not remember later because he had not been listening. He was still thinking about Jan, who he hadn't thought of in years. They had only known each other briefly after the convoy stopped. Her family was an Engineer family too; they mostly worked electricals, and once during the long run, she came by to his rig during a repair stop and righted a broken light inside the cab. She had a sister, a little younger than her, who also went up top to work the farms. Jan was the one who had torn off a piece of his shirt to staunch the bleeding. He never knew she was one of the wives; now he wondered who the others were.

Something in the tone of her voice made Ace look up and pay attention. Miss Giddy spoke louder, her strong words carrying over the wind of the empty waste.

_Fear not, for He has redeemed you;_  
_He has called you by your name; you are awaited._  
_When you pass through the waters, He will be with you;_  
_And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you._  
_With His regard those Currents turn awry_  
_And lose the name of Action._  
_And when you walk through the fires, you shall not be burned,_  
_Nor shall the flame scorch you._  
_Be all my half-life Witnessed._

Miss Giddy raised her hands in prayer, and then folded her fingers together.

“Witness,” she suddenly shouted, and soon even Ace found himself saying the word.

“Witness!”

After everyone else had all left, Ace went back and sprinkled the disturbed soil of Jan's unmarked grave with a handful of white clay. Ace stood there for a long moment, and wondered what words they would have spoken to each other if they had known each other for more than a few, fleeting moments


	4. Chapter 4

Not long after the funeral, the brothers had an argument. No one knew what it was over, but some people whispered it was over a woman. Whatever the case, the wealth of the Citadel was to be divided up; for all the years of work, Danny ended up with many of the cars, including the trade rig, and a portion of the boys. Danny headed north to start a new settlement on the heap of an old farming settlement, taking with him the bullet works and the metal forges. The brothers had come to an agreement; they couldn't live together anymore, but Danny would supply the arms and in turn, Joe would supply the food and water. This meant little to Ace other than that there was now more work to do; orders came down to begin building a new trade rig. All the cars had nicknames; it helped keep track of who was working on what, and Ace ended up designing and building the great sturdy water tanks of the new rig. It was christened the War Rig; after all, the cold war between the brothers was its mother and father.

After the day when Ace watched as some of his fellow boys were sent north to work at Danny's new bullet farm, the tracks of their cars leaving a crumbling, dusty trail behind them, Ace began to realize that no one was left that remembered the old days of the long run. Many of his peers had died, killed by sickness, by work, by long hard runs to Bartertown. Some, like the girls had gone up top and never came back down, except as corpses. Others had been crippled and sent down to fend for themselves in the waste. Still others had been stolen, never to be seen again.

Already the jokes and stories he had with his peers were disappearing; the new boys had their own ideas, their own stories. But some stories had lasting power, and sometimes when pressed, Ace would tell them about the time that Immortan Joe grabbed the sun.

 

Once the Immortan's new home was complete and he and his growing family were moved in, they counted that as the first day of the new era, the era of the Citadel. Word soon spread of the Citadel's wealth, of its generosity. The Immortan out of kindness regularly gave out Aqua-Cola; people flocked to it from days and days away, hoping to be raised up, to be brought up out of the waste, and many began living off the scraps thrown down from above. 

As the Citadel's fortunes slowly rose, so did Ace's.

All the miscellaneous jobs he had done over the years had started becoming specialized positions. Revhead, Lancer, Driver, Half-life Noble, Imperator, Organics, War Boys...there was a new vocabulary and hierarchy that had developed around those jobs as they became specialized and delineated. The Immortan was busy now with other concerns; he and Danny had finally patched things up and were trying to get a new southern settlement on its feet, the bones of a refinery a few miles south of the Citadel, so much of the work that the Immortan did on trade runs were distributed to trusted Imperators.

Ace was lucky; he had been rudely healthy all these years. Too heavily built for fancy acrobatics, he stayed solidly connected to the War Rig when he fought on it, and that alone saved him from many serious injuries, the kind of injuries that came about with hard falls onto the unforgiving ground of the Fury Road. Though years of explosions and shrapnel took its toll on his skin, they were only cosmetic, superficial wounds that healed cleanly and quickly. His many scars were marks of prestige among his peers. 

The days of breaking rock or setting pipes was over; he no longer even repaired windmills. Enough Organics had been taught that job so that he now only saw those tall metal structures when he was at the right angle to look up at the Immortan's Pillar from the War Pillar. Besides, they didn't even pump water anymore; the drilling had gone deeper into bedrock and the windmills had been converted to power electricals.

He counted his fortunes as he officially moved up the ranks, settling in at Half-life Noble, the core crew of the War Rig, talented War Boys with seniority over their fellows, who functioned as a buffer between War Boy society and the Imperators.

Imperator he could have aspired to, but Ace never had any interest in giving up the white; the further he was from the Prime, the better, he had always thought, but when pressed, he merely said he would rather work alongside the others on the War Rig crew. Easier to nap on long runs on a crew of five or more, no luck for the Imperator driving.

*****

Ace never noticed he was sick until someone else pointed it out, and then it made sense why he was having pains when he turned his neck too sharply. The growths waxed and waned with the passing seasons, but it never gave him too much pain, nothing he couldn't live with, and unlike some of the others, he didn't succumb to fevers or lose flesh. Whatever he had going on inside, whatever quiet, persistent revolt his body was undergoing, it was a silent revolution that so far had shed no blood, toppled no leadership.

He lived with death every day; didn't everyone? Today, tomorrow, it could all be gone in a shock of blowing sand and darkness, in a handful of white clay. Wheel moon turned every night, even if you couldn't see it. Sometimes people were lifted high, sometimes people got crushed beneath it. If he was going to die, he was going to do it protecting them. His War Boys, his War Pups, his Organics, even his Wretched. Until then he'd keep going, keep trying.

Ace volunteered for the front gunner's nest on every Bartertown run.

 

The Half-life Nobles formed their own little society. It was an ever-evolving group whose numbers varied constantly; many died even on their first or second Bartertown runs. To survive a few hundred days was something notable; to survive as long as Ace had was astounding. They discussed amongst themselves who would be promoted, who would be trained to do what. Which promising War Boy should be trained as a Lancer, which Lancer might be moved up to Driver, what to look for when buying new children. A few years into Ace's stint as a Half-life Noble, a fairly talented Driver named Deklid was promoted to crew the War Rig and joined the ranks of the Half-life Nobles.

Like any new member, Deklid started off as the War Pup trainer. No one much wanted this job. Despite the prestige of the War Rig, many considered it not worth their time to spend what could be weeks or years doing terrible, thankless work. Most tried to get out of it as soon as they could, preferring to pick and choose talented War Boys to train. Wrangling the War Pups, sorting the best ones from the worst ones, fighting with Imperators over their labor, disciplining them, dealing with their messes, shoveling out soiled sand from their nests... it was work for novices who like everyone else had to take their turn in the limited but extant hierarchy of Half-life Nobles. Ace himself had never done it and was glad for it; he had too much seniority and respect among the Half-life Nobles for the others to dump the worst job on him.

But one day, passing by the training shop, Ace heard Deklid shouting angrily at a screaming child; whatever happened, a pup had broken his leg and had to be sent to the Organic. It was a bad break; the boy had been crippled and ended up being sent down. Then he heard about another one, this time a broken arm. Though the boy healed, he'd be no more than an Organic for the rest of his life; the break had made the boy just crooked enough so that he'd never be able to climb a rig. So on the next Bartertown run, when Deklid was posted to the front gunner's nest beside Ace, somehow or another he fell during a fight with a handful of road warriors about a day and a half's run from the Citadel and went under the wheels. It was no surprise to anyone when it happened. After all, many Drivers never learned enough Lancer tricks on balance, weight distribution, and coordination with the Driver to make the transition to Half-life Noble; it seemed Deklid should have trained harder after he was promoted.

Everyone knew why it happened, though perhaps not how, and no one questioned it or him. But Ace found himself quietly pushed into the role of the new trainer, the mildest possible reproach. If the others had really disagreed with what he did, he would have gone under the wheels too.

 

To his surprise, Ace found he liked the work. It was not half as hard as cutting rock, and much more enjoyable than setting miles of drainage pipes. Training presented more interesting problems to solve than building cars, and the pups were bright and hard-working. Even arguing with the Imperators turned out to be easier than he anticipated, but for one or two memorably nasty run-ins with the Prime. Most of the Imperators were babes in arms when he was riding shotgun on the trade rig; they generally had the sense not to argue with him.

It turned out that the Ace was a better trainer than any they had in recent memory; at least four of his first set of War Pup proteges would go down as some of the best War Boys the Citadel had ever produced; Slit, Nux, Furiosa, and Morsov. The Ace, everyone said, had an eye for quality. If he took you on to train, War Pup or War Boy, you'd be raised up to the heights. None of his pups stayed Revheads for long, some even made Driver without ever being a Lancer. 

Why, he even trained an Imperator once.


	5. Chapter 5

The Ace looked in the Lancer's practice shop; normally at this hour it would be empty, but he had heard familiar voices, so he came to give it a look.

“What do you need?” The Ace came over to watch the works.

“Nothing.” Furiosa sat on the stone bench, screwing in parts with her good hand while Nux was setting the stabilizer for her mechanical hand. Pieces of it lay on the upper shelf of the bench between the two War Boys, laid out in sequence; small motors, screws, bolts, springs... The Ace looked it over curiously.

“You should use something else for better grip, Nux.” Sitting beside Nux and assembling a tiny motor with practiced ease, Slit paused and leaned over Nux's shoulder, peering at the work. “Something with teeth.”

“You want everything with teeth,” Nux grinned, and pulled on a welding mask, reaching for the welder. “Told you already these are the very best parts we could get, so we're making do. Gonna secure this part and then we'll--”

“No, wait.” The Ace pushed Nux's mask back gently. “Got something you can use.”

The Ace pulled out a tool from his right-hand tool sheath, close at hand at his hip. He rarely used it; despite its age and patina it was almost new. The jagged teeth of the tool were not machined but hand-drilled. He had a sudden flash of memory, the creak of the turning windmill, Frances' furrowed brow as she drilled the teeth of the curved-jaw pliers herself, and he was draped over her strong back, arms around her neck, his chin on her shoulder as she carved each furrow.

Frances was singing a song, but he could not remember the tune or the words. He could just remember the vibration of the sound moving through her body as she worked, passing through him.

The Ace blinked, nodding thoughtfully.

Nux looked up at him, bright eyes curious.

“Seems like this could make a nice thumb.” The Ace handed the tool over to Nux, who gauged it, weighing it in his hand briefly before taking it apart at its connective bolt.

“Yeah, yeah. This is perfect. We should have asked you first.” Nux quickly went to work reordering the parts for the mechanical hand, setting some parts aside, adding others.

“Teeth. Finally someone with some sense.” Slit set his chin on Nux's shoulder briefly. “Next time Nux, save yourself some trouble and listen to my suggestions. Told you we should have asked the Ace if he knew someone who might have the right parts.”

Furiosa caught the Ace's eye. “You sure, Ace? You've had that as long as I can remember.”

“Sure, I'm sure. It's just a tool. Barely use it anyway. Bit small for my hand. Besides, would be a shame if we bolted on a new wheel for you that didn't have enough grip, eh Furiosa?”

 

A hush descended over the crowds as the fully-loaded War-Rig was lowered. The Wretched craned their necks to look up, as the War Boys and War Pups peered curiously down.

“I salute my Half-life War Boys.”

Together with the rest of the War Crew, the Ace raised his arms and folded hands together to salute the Immortan. As was custom, the Imperator was always late arriving on the their first Bartertown run. Ages ago, it had been an accident that turned into a running joke when the first assigned Imperator to drive the War Rig had been held up topside after missing the lowering of the War Rig. That man had been dead for many years, and now it had become something of a War Boy ritual that even the Immortan knew about and respected.

“I salute my Imperator Furiosa.” The Immortan's voice rang out clearly over the crowd. The Ace looked up at her, at her strong shoulders and the belts around her waist, her tightly muscled arms holding up the wheel in salute. The Ace smiled faintly to himself as Furiosa was lowered on a separate car lift, her first time out without the white, her first trip out as Imperator. The crowds cheered, a deafening roar. Furiosa stepped off the lift, walked to the War Rig and ceremoniously entered the cab, setting the wheel. The skeletal arm gleamed blood-red; a newly painted addition to commemorate their newest Imperator.

The War Rig rumbled to life under the Ace's feet.

With a smooth motion, the War Rig set off for Bartertown, surrounded by its massive fleet of escort vehicles.

The Ace made his way down to the cab, holding on lightly to the frame of the window; Furiosa had requested that he be moved up to the head of the crew as her lieutenant, and here on the War Rig, the Imperator's word was law.

“Boss?”

“Yeah?” She kept her eyes on the road, her hand on the wheel and then she shifted into fifth gear. The Ace smiled, seeing her new hand gripping the wheel neatly, the hydraulics moving smoothly so that she could adjust her grip. 

“Good work, boss. Nice job.”

“Thanks.” Furiosa darted him the barest of tense smiles, her eyes focused on the road ahead.

“I'll be up top watchin your back and feet. Lemme know if you need anything.”

“Sure thing, Ace.”


	6. Coda

Sandy tendrils swirled, coiling their way around the hard-churning wheels and dazed, staring blearily into the massive face of the storm, the Ace swiped weakly at his own face, tasting blood. The pain was shocking; he hadn't felt anything like this in years. His nose was broken again, though this time by another Imperator and this time not the Prime.

He looked down; the skeletal arm painted on the side of the truck had lost a lot of its color already. He remembered when it was newly painted for Furiosa, when it glistened crimson in the sunlight. Now it was worn out, faded by the punishing light of the sun and the grinding sand and dust.

All around him were the sounds of shouts, of gunfire, the strong jolt and metal scrape of the War Rig as it hit another vehicle.

The Ace held on for as long as he could, but his right arm had grown just a little weaker than the left over the years; the sickness was catching up to him. Today, tomorrow, it could be any day. Above, he looked for the wheel moon, but it did not shine, did not turn for him. It was lost in the growing haze of the storm.

He twisted, fumbling for the frame of the open window with his left arm to haul himself back up, to keep going, but he lost his grip before he reached the frame.

Daylight turned suddenly to night, and an even stronger wind struck the Ace.

 

White, everything was white...

**Author's Note:**

> As the water supplies failed/went bad, the Engineers and their settlement neighbors realized they had to move. As a community, they stockpiled enough fuel and supplies to make one long run to Walhalla (geography very loosely based on the actual place in Australia). Due to bad luck, nearly all the adults died over the course of the long run but for Joe and Danny (the Bullet Farmer), who both had experience surviving storms and managed to shelter at the last minute. The dust/sand-caused deaths to adults and infants alike are similar to those experienced in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression.
> 
> When Joe takes over the convoy, they spot the pillars on their way to Walhalla. Joe decides that it would be a safer bet to stop and settle at what would become the Citadel as opposed to pushing on to Walhalla as their food and water are running low, despite having more than enough fuel to make it all the way. Pragmatically, they settled at the Citadel, and thus Joe was able to stockpile fuel and materials in his new stronghold.
> 
> At one point Joe really was a hero. It's not that absolute power corrupts absolutely (which is a silly saying); more that Joe was entrusted with power and eventually comes to believe that he deserves it. Had he been a better man, he would have stopped the children's idol worship of him instead of letting it get out of hand and letting it go to his head. Had he been a better man, he would have worked alongside the children instead of making them serve him, under the excuse that he was too busy/too important to be breaking rock. 
> 
> White is the color of death in some cultures.
> 
> Ace's blackened head is an unconscious imitation of his father's black helmet. Others adopt that look as well, though in different ways.
> 
> Miss Giddy's speech comes from a mishmash of two main sources, the Bible and Shakespeare, plus my own additions. She is not talking about Immortan Joe, but the proto-War Boys don't know any better. Unintentionally, between her tattoos and the funerary speech, she gives them a vocabulary to both define and describe themselves. 
> 
> Jan's unnamed younger sister is Rictus Erectus' mother, and one of the first Milk Mothers. Initially the Milk Mothers were part-time insurance against maternal deaths and the ensuing starvation of the babies, but the milk was turned into a source of income once Joe realized he could sell the surplus at a premium rate. Now it is merely a commodity like anything else; water, produce, slaves, War Boys, etc.
> 
> The Prime Imperator was the main antagonist in 'Furiosa'. Once Furiosa became a full War Boy, she is literally untouchable to him; she became part of a system of minor and major alliances among Revhead crews, Drivers, and Lancers as well as the overall War Boy population. The Prime rises to power purely by chance, being the oldest boy of the survivors. Serving Immortan Joe and his family keeps him out of harm's way, which is why he has no scars despite his age in contrast to The Ace.
> 
> The Ace is around nine years old at the beginning of the story. The driving mechanisms for the rigs are height adjustable so most kids around that age or even younger can drive in case of extremis. He spends several years with the other kids digging out the warren of the Citadel and doing hard labor until he's old enough to guard Bartertown runs. By the time of Jan's death, he is about sixteen. As they don't count the foundation date of the Citadel until some years after the first settlers arrived, by the time we get to the movie, the Ace is about 49. This puts Immortan Joe, the Bullet Farmer, and Miss Giddy respectively in their late 60s/early 70s, mid 70s, and late 70s/early 80s. The Ace is prematurely aged by his years of intense physical labor. 12045 days is interpreted as counting from the foundation date of the Citadel plus 30 to reflect that Max had been at the Citadel for at least a couple weeks before Furiosa went rogue. 
> 
> In _Furiosa_ , Furiosa is supposed to be a young teenager, perhaps fourteen or fifteen when The Ace takes her on as a War Pup. By the time she is an Imperator, she's known the Ace for about ten years or so, first as her War Pup trainer, and then later as her War Boy trainer. The Ace fell back into favor amongst his fellow Half-life Noble peers and went back to training individuals as he does with Nux in _L'Arbre du Ténéré_. The Ace and Furiosa were equals only briefly in _Fortuna_ ; she's gone past where he is willing to go. Imperator Furiosa with The Ace as her crew chief spent years doing trade runs and working together before the day of that fateful detour from Gastown. 
> 
> Once again, I salute Geoduck, for editorial advice and for listening to my ramblings. Once again, I salute my readers, who have ridden with me for a few short stories, on the superhighways of the Internet. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
